Two Days in the Country When the Country Landowners' Association
organised their first Game Fair (in 1958, at Stetchworth near Newmarket) an attendance of 2,000 was expected; and although in the end 8,000 turned up and the catering arrangements in consequence broke down it could hardly have been foreseen that the experiment would estab- lish itself as a permanent landmark in the crowded summer calendar. More than 30,000 people came to last week's Game Fair at Burgh- ley House, and most regulars—like old Strix, who has been to five out of the six so far held— seemed to agree that it was the best so far. The hundred-acre park, dominated by the fairy -story, 240-roomed Elizabethan house, lent itself rather better to the complex layout of the fair than did the surroundings of Longleat and Hack wood. The organisation was first-class, and the specta- tors were, as always, almost as well worth watch- ing as the things they came to see. People who visualise this as a 'tweedy' occasion, frequented mainly—like Henley Regatta—by a more or less homogenous category of human beings, are far off the mark. Addicts of coarse fishing rub shoulders 'with falconers in fancy dress, a wheez- ing pug with Ena Sharpies in tow squares up to the debutante's saluki. The incessant rattle of musketry is only marginally generated by squires with Purdeys; of the 55,000 cartridges expended I would guess that half were fired by men who rarely shoot at anything but clay pigeons, and I doubt if there was a single dowager among the 1,200 men and women who took lessons in archery. The charm of the Game Fair is that the wide diversity of tastes for which it caters is re- flected in the faces, gaits, clothes and accents of the fair-goers.
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